you two look so good together

Contrary to the claims (or, denials, rather) of alcoholics and addicts at large, it’s not a clean line or a dirty cocktail that lights the night.

Especially when the creeping cold glues us to our couches. And even though Cape Town has come home from the contentious and much coveted SAMAs  with no less than a dozen of them for the Mother city mantelpiece, fireplaces and feather duvets have suddenly become hot property (quite literally).  So despite a slightly more dashing public image, live local music may have to work a little more cleverly to get attention this season, rather than harder. (It’s hard enough, after all, to get a good song circulating beyond a Facebook fan page player.)

A good gig takes a good band; but a great gig takes a great combination. Get the setting, the sound and the souls right, and you have a great night on your hands. If your heart is holed up like most people’s hearths were until last week, try a little pairing up this season. I’m talking musical coupling, yeah? Sorry to say, but co-dependency isn’t healthy any other way.

This Friday while the faithful walk to their holy houses in the rain, and the unfaithful walk to their unholy houses in the rain, Cape Town is cutting it clean with some of the finest combinations since Lindt got balls. Take a sniff of

Joshua Grierson and Mr. Cat And The Jackal – @Dorp Straat Teater. heart strains and pirate stains tumbling over each other unapologetically.  (Bonus - the venue is as quaint and cosy as its performers are not).

 The Sleepers and Foto Na Dans @ ZULA. Dark rock and arte rock to revive the listless and ground the restless. Think contemplative and incendiary. Think sirens and soul mates. Think Le-Roi and Sy (see pic above) No, don’t think. You won’t need to.  

 And if you’re just in it for the party, and you like it in the Ass   (embly), you’re still in the right city. Pull in (ahem) to Our petal ploys (ag, boys), Magic of Pegasus  - who may or may not be taking the piss (watch this space)  .  As Friday unfurls, they will pull on their spandex and flex their skinny screams to deliver you a bubble bath of pseudo-electro cum glam cock sexiness (or is that pseudo-sexiness? Or Speedo testiness? You’ll never know if you don’t get down there. ahemagain). Next to their cotton candy tonguing cheekiness, bruise your heartbeats on the muddy cuts and cutting chords of Tigerstrike - electro energy; analogue emotion. Even if you don’t like it, you’ll probably dance to it.

Sadly, most of us now know that Nothing is no more. Mama Know Nothing, yes? No.  The untimely undoing of the city’s best looking (there, I finally said it) folk-funk-blues-babes (the boys too), means that there is one hot coupling that won’t happen. Ever.  I wanted guns and mamas, pretty nothings, swinging blues, slow bleeding fusion. But no, all we have to look forward to now is the official release of the dirty post mortem. There’s a story behind it, of course, and I’ll be telling my version of it shortly. But beauty (and brilliant shooting) aside,  substitutes will never suffice the real thing, so I guess I’m just going to have to get over becoming an aural orphan of the Mamas, and keep gunning for the Guns. (Speaking of which, have you joined the union yet?) That’s hotstix ma’Lucas’s not-so-little side project.  Listen a little here , you might like it.

It's sobering that in the midst of mourning, the music goes on. We’ve lost the lovelies, but they’ll come up with a new combination, no doubt. We’re still very lucky to be complaining about some of the sorts of couplings that come about on a Friday night, even if other ones disintegrate like powder.

 

Find The Party - Desmond And The Tutus

(yissis! This was written December 2006! - Nine months ago...enough time to birth a baby, né? Forgive, kittens, twas hiding somewhere in my harddrive archive – can you say that five times fast?! Harddrivearchivehardivearcdrivedarkhivearkdive eeuyaargh!)

*Ahem.*

Kiss on the cheek

(dec 2006)

Last night was a typical Cape Town Summer’s night out. You don’t always find the (right) party by default; it’s usually somebody else’s fault. In this case, many people contributed to my fun. I left the stiff-collared middle-of-the-road (but jamming) yuppy jol at armchair (hey, it takes all types to float a business in this industry, gil’s just doing his job for live music) and found a flood of summery seventeen year olds making the (former) Cool Runnings very happy about their deal with Cobra. There were hoards of homies buzzing about while the fire dancers tickled our short attentions spans with flashes of flame and local fame. Cape Town is living up to its reputation for beautiful women and pretty boys. I didn’t quite know where to look, actually, it was eye-candy-cum-kindergarten - Hip chicks with slim hips, the token would-be beauties with everything hanging out. Sjoe! Like any media mind-washed mêdem, my eyes settled on a tiny creature flaunting it all, sporting little more than a strip of fabric across her punani and a cropped leather jacket over the fresh, desperate skin exposing her honour. She looked lost. I wanted to take her my arms in and give her some undies to put on under her loincloth, and teach her that a woman’s weapons is not her wang – uh - whatsit. But anyway.. Freedom means finding your own boundaries, innit?

So that got old, and I ebbed off to Mercury, which is possibly older than all of us, and seedier. I enjoyed Eat This, Horse (despite their bad hair) and then I really enjoyed Desmond and the Tutus(despite their bad name). Sparing me the crackers and overfull tummy, the tutus brought Christmas to me. They did a dandy job of impersonating kissmiss trees. They came on stage dressed in skinny jeans and stripy tops (~sigh~) and long Hanson hair. (were the Hansons boys or girls? I was never totally convinced either way). The white, twinkling Christmas lights wrapped around their necks sold me completely - I’m sucker for sparkly things and party animals. With the stage lights off, they bopped around beautifully like illuminated robots, their knees knocking together in all the right places, and their heads nodding about in concurrence.

No idle promises from these boys –their noise is easy to enjoy, and they know how to dance, I guess, because they do it their way. It’s happy, it’s hairy, it’s happening.

Oh. And they rival Taxi Violence and The Sleepers with their flyer art…!

cutting what?

it is. my suspicion. that often the more popular music is with the populace, the more middle of the middle it is. which is not to say it's not good; just... easy.

music means many things to many souls. it doesn't have to claim your concentration, and it doesn't have to foreground your growth.

but if often helps if it does! ask the best. and their (real) friends...

kILLING mE sOFTLY (the sleepers)

photos.helen wesctott (hermanus. the next night)

A hallowed howl came out of R.O.A.R from the throats of The Sleepers last Friday night. It gargled blood, love and heaven and finished with a fine climax that brought inner walls crashing in on themselves.

Each time this band gets up on stage and breaks it down, the veneer of bourgeois bliss peels back another layer. Not that it’s about class - these boys with expensive toys work hard and play harder. (and anyway, we all know it’s a cult/ure war, not a class war (sorry, zinaid)). With their evil, equal mix of dark and light, The Sleepers are slowly waking us up to the fact that there is more to their music than meets the ear, and more to the mutliverse we call our hometown than withering winter wails.

Give Adam Hill, Steven Jacobson, Jordi Reddy, Nicolai Roos and Simon Tamblyn a chance and their scheming riffs and raids on rhythm will prove that the range of emotions broiling in slaapstad psyches extends beyond spring hope and summer bliss and winter blues into rage, reverence and wry detachment . I make no mistake with my take: The Sleepers herald a new season of the soul.

There’s a bit of a crossover going on here, and dissonance is a distant dream against the power of their sound. The harmony’s in their devilry. the guitars are so tight they meld and I haven’t heard a more articulate and delicate (sic) drummer in the city since kesivan cut the chords of my education (his is jazz fusion, by the way, and this is dark rock). Simon’s dissenting vocals offset any expectations that the popover may have left us with (a popover’s what you get when the morning after listening to too much commercial radio, and is best remedied with silence.) Altogether it mixes madly into something south of sane.

You’ll come out of The Sleepers gigs inspired. They carve catharsis out of sound, they curl toes and turn the night around.

Expect the ordinary and you will be sorely disappointed.

( in other words)

Genre-lisations

What’s in a word? When the same band is variously described as alt rock, progressive rock and punk metal by music critics, you’ve got to ask yourself who’s speaking to who. I’ve said it before. By nature of its wide-winged interpretation, pigeonholing genre can be a serious disservice to musicians. But perhaps not to their audiences and potential fans.

Trucker?

Ask people what a truck sounds like. a rare few will say something like, ‘a dinosaur with laryngitis’. Some will shrug their shoulders and maybe try to make the noise for you. And others will just say, “like a truck, haven’t you heard one?” But that’s just the point. If you haven’t heard, and you want an approximate idea of a sound, who’s going to help you? Not the dinosaur with laryngitis.

A velve (er, valve) for exasperation

Here’s an example : I recently heard what a music journalist i respect calls a mix of indie-disco, kwaito-rock and acoustic Drum & Bass. i was intrigued by the description, but not gratified by it. I couldn’t hear the disco. I couldn’t hear the kwaito. I could hear a lot of passion, and perhaps that's what all these words are trying to describe.

Untie yourself

Words cannot do music justice. But in some cases, they’re all we’ve got. Words about music need to be music to the ears. It’s an odd interface, language. We’re fluent in it, but it often betrays us. We’ve been using words since we could crawl, but sometimes, eish, they make your skin crawl. And the thing is that music was there first. We hear rhythm and rage before we ever say a word; think of heartbeats. Anguish. Crying. Mumbling. The things babies do. Well, we’re babies when words won’t work. But you try telling someone that a band sounds like another band they haven’t heard. What are they going to do? Rush out and sample it on myspace? (nope, facebook doesn’t do that. yet) No. they’re going to look at you blankly and sample something else. And by the same token, try explaining recent visitors, Evanescence – operatic emo? Gothic clit-pop-rock? Huh? Exacty, ek sê...

In with the old?

Sometimes I think we should go back to the days and ways of yore, when we had fewer genres, maybe keep three or four or five definitive groups names, and then relate that to some quintessentially human experience (preferably sensory, for absolute understanding) like seasons, or colours. It cuts down on adjectives, expletives, and might save us from reaching that critical mass that loses the point entirely. ..- sorry, what was the point again? Well, let’s just say that slimming down the genres might help The Sleepers feel less like their amazing music is creating semantic schizophrenia in the media, and rather a tempered excitement that making hard, melodic sounds with lots of light inspires. But what would we describe them as, then? Well, how about a clever bassist(and fan)'s suggestion of “dark rock”?

the sleepers are awake

The Sleepers are the hottest, darkest emerging talent in this town.

The art in their flyers carries right through to their souls. and on the way it highjacks their music and makes something sublime of it all. something strong, yet awkward. edgy, but steady. if you're sitting, it'll leave you standing. if you're standing, it'll sweep you off your feet.

you can contend my theory if you see them at Mercury tonight.

the sleepers - men in skirts

What, Simon, no eyeliner this time?

Nice to hear a full sound stripped down. an Acoustic set at Zula. This one was raw, and beautifully imperfect.

Check them out.

thesleepers.co.za

www.myspace.com/thesleepersdreamspace

i Like men in skirts.